Hico Steak Cook-Off 2010

Last weekend I went to Hico for the 7th Annual Texas Steak Cook-Off. This was my family's second year to enter the cook-off and we were really looking forward to it! Last year in the cook-off we won 10th place out of 80 teams and so we were hoping to do good again this year

I was off work on Friday and so I left town after lunch and headed to Hico. It was great to get to see my Dad and brother again and also Doug and Lance. We found our spot on Friday and started setting up and then practiced making some steaks and other things we had brought to cook.

Setting up the grill

Saturday morning started bright and early and the guys made breakfast for us out on the grill. After breakfast it was time to get serious and make our appetizer to turn into the judges. The appetizer is normally my Mom's job but since she wasn't there this year I got to be the driving force behind the appetizer this year! We really didn't have a great idea of what we wanted to do and came up with the plan as we were making it. We decided to take a piece of pork tenderloin, a chunk of yellow bell pepper and a piece of jalapeno and wrap it in bacon and then put it on the smoker.

Getting our appetizer ready to go on the grill

We finished it off on the grill and then also grilled a slice of tomato and removed the skin from the tomato and put that as the finishing touch on our creation. It tasted really yummy and the colors and presentation were pretty great and so we sent them off for judging!

Turning the appetizer in for judging

We had a couple hours wait after turning in our appetizer before our steak was due and so we went to cooking various things to serve to the public (over 5,300 people) that was out walking around. We made pork tenderloin, some of our bacon wrapped appetizers, stuffed jalapenos, green chili beef stew, and a veggie and sausage melody.

Pork tenderloin we grilled to serve to the public

making stew
Seth chopping vegetables
a few veggies we made to go with all the meats

While we were working on the stuff to serve the public Dad and Lance started working on our steak. The cook-off supplies the cut of meat to cook so that everyone has the same quality of steak to start out with and then it is up to each team to make the steak their own. Each team gets 2 steaks to cook and they choose the best one to submit for judging. This year they broke the 84 teams that entered up into 3 groups and each group was assigned a different time slot to turn their steaks in. The top 10 teams are then picked out of each group to move on to the final round.

My Dad makes a great steak and is very serious about getting everything just perfect. He cooked both the steaks but wasn't happy at all about how one of them cooked and so we decided to turn the other in and sampled the one he didn't like. We did not like the one that we sampled at all and really hoped that the other one was better.

our steak headed to be judged
The top 30 teams were announced and we did not make it into the 2nd round this year so we were pretty disappointed. We were really shocked though because the team that won the competition last year didn't make it through the first round either this year!

Despite our disappointment we had a lot of fun in Hico last weekend and are already planning and looking forward to the cook-off next year! Dad is already planning on practicing and perfecting the timing on cooking the steak so that the "Double T Heat Slingers" can make a come back next year!!!